**4/14/15 Note: I have modified every instance of the word (l o a n) in this post as I am getting too many spam posts about lo_ans and finance!**
Last Friday (1/23/15), as part of
their self-styled Irish Family History Day, Find My Past released a significant
tranche of Irish records. For more information about this you can read
the report from the always excellent Irish Genealogy News. What caught my eye, and what is of interest to this
blog, is the set of records,
Ireland,
Poverty Relief Lo_ans, 1824-1871.
The Poverty Relief Lo_ans are a
collection of papers related to the Irish Reproductive Lo_an Fund. The fund was
created in 1822 to provide short term, low interest lo_ans to the ‘industrious
poor.’ By industrious it is meant people who will use the lo_an for reproductive
purposes, for example, a fisherman who needs money to repair a boat or a farmer
who wants to purchase new seeds. The fund did not require any capital or
physical backing, instead they required that each borrower have two guarantors
sign for the lo_an. In some records the role of guarantor is also called
security or sureties. These guarantors were often neighbors or close relatives.
If the borrower defaulted on the lo_an then responsibility for repayment would
lie with the guarantors. The records are significant because they include the
years of the Great Famine and record those living on Ireland’s Western Seaboard
who were hit the worst by the catastrophe.
A large number of the
Reproductive Lo_an Funds failed and closed during the years of The Great Famine.
This era, of course, saw huge numbers of Irish people emigrate. In the early
1850s, a detailed townland-by-townland survey was carried out where the Funds
were active, to see what happened to those who availed of lo_ans.
It is these documents that will be of particular use to those in the U.S. and
Canada who are trying to establish a townland of origin in Ireland for their
ancestors; they recorded deaths, economic circumstances and, crucially, instance of emigration.
So, an example. Let's say that
you have a Michael Ryan in your family tree, born in Ireland, appearing in the
U.S. federal census of 1890,
and you have traced his arrival in the U.S. to the time of the Great Famine.
[3] How
many Michael Ryans were born in Ireland? How long is a piece of string? You
might never find out where he is from. But, lets also say that in the same
building on that census document, the next entry after Michael Ryan and his
family is for the Ebzery family, also from Ireland.
You've worked hard on researching
your Irish ancestors over the last twenty years and you know that the
FAN club methodology can
be useful, all the more so with rare names. Ebzery is an unusual name in
Ireland and a quick check of
the 1901 census and
Griffith's Valuation, shows that there are only a few of them, all concentrated in
Limerick. That's a good development, but there are still a lot of Michael Ryans in Limerick.
Now it's time to look for these
names in the Reproductive Lo_an Fund records. Philip Ebzery took out a lo_an on 23 November 1846, with John Ebzery and Michael Ryan acting as sureties.[4] An 1853 record from the townland
of Doonscardeen in the civil parish of Robertstown, Limerick gives the following
information -
 |
| Ebzery/Ryan Reproductive Lo_an Fund [5] - Click for larger image |
For Philip it says: “resided here in 1846 a
farmer, was poor, died about 4 years ago, family all emigrated.” For John
Ebzery, it states: “lived here in 1846, was a farmer, went to Australia about
four years since with his mother and sisters” and for Michael Ryan it outlines
that he was: “lived here in 1846, a poor laborer supporting his mother and
sisters” and he “emigrated to America with his family in 1847.”
To suddenly find this information
after years of searching would be a fantastic
development for your genealogy research. You could now hone in on Catholic
parish registers from the area to look for baptismal and marriage information
to further link this Michael Ryan with the one in the U.S.
To learn more about these records, and see another example of tracing an
emigrant from his appearance in these records to the U.S federal census, you
can read the associated
Find
My Past blog post.
Some of these records have been
available for free online for a number of years. In 2003, the non-genealogy website,
movinghere.org.uk, digitized records for counties Cork, Galway, Limerick, Mayo,
Roscommon, and Tipperary for the years 1846-1848 and 1853-1854 (Clare and Sligo
are not included).
Crucially, they include the relevant records that contain information about those who
emigrated.
The record images on the Moving Here website are not
indexed, as they would be on a genealogy website, so you will have to
experiment with the names of counties and areas within to see if they are
available. If you find records for an area of interest, you can download them
as pdf files.
The Skibbereen Heritage Centre
(Co. Cork) has also transcribed information from eight funds that were active
in the area.
Access their database here.
